Monday, October 22, 2018

Starting pitching
Cashman said that seeking starting pitching will be a “focus point.” There are vacancies to be filled, with J.A. Happ and CC Sabathia eligible for free agency, and the club open-minded toward moving Sonny Gray in a trade. Patrick Corbin is believed to be among the Yankees’ top targets and has made no secret of his desire to wear pinstripes. The left-hander would probably fall behind Luis Severino and Masahiro Tanaka as a solid mid-rotation starter, albeit one who could be immensely valuable. Cashman said that he hopes the Yankees are “lucky enough to sign” Happ, and Sabathia would like to return. Lance Lynn is also about to become a free agent.

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Cashman said that seeking starting pitching will be a “focus point.” There are vacancies to be filled

Said every GM, every year since forever.

If NY adds some decent SP, they've enough talent to win 105 games next year. However if there is some regression from their young stars, Sanchez continues to be whatever he is, the special NY fairy dust blows off of Voit and Judge/Stanton K at least 430 times then they'll win about 87 games. I think the team succeeded in spite of Boone also. As a manager he seems pretty average.

I'd be curious as to what NY fans think because as a Red Sox fan I am totally spitballing here....

The way people talked about Andujar’s defense coming into the season, you’d have thought he was a total butcher at the hot corner. That is most certainly not the case. His hands are good and his arm is very strong and accurate. Andujar’s transfer can be slow, which is something that has to be cleaned up, otherwise the skills are there for a strong defensive third baseman. And yet, among the 21 players with 500+ innings at third base:

DRS: -12 (Maikel Franco is second worst at -9)
UZR: -6.8 (Evan Longoria is next worst at -4.6)
Total Zone: -16 (better than only Colin Moran’s -19)

Yikes. The defensive stats hate Andujar. It’s a small sample size, of course. Truth be told we need several years of data before defensive numbers become reliable. The early returns are scary though. They rate Andujar as basically the worst defensive third baseman in the game today. He has no trouble fielding the ball and his throws are fine, so what gives? It’s his range.

Andujar has had no trouble making “routine” plays, which are batted balls that are turned into outs 90-100% of the time league-wide. His conversion rate is on the low end of the scale for “likely” plays, and he’s done nothing below that. Batted balls that are turned into outs 0-60% of the time around the league have been turned into an out 0% of the time by Andujar. Yikes.

That’s a long way of saying if you hit the ball at Andujar, he’s going to make the play. Hit the ball anything more than a step or two away from him in either direction, and he’s probably not going to make the play. Does that mean he won’t make those plays forever and ever? No, of course not. Andujar could improve his reads and first step and range. Young players are known to get better, after all. That said, Andujar is something of a defensive liability. His value is tied up heavily in his bat, specifically his power and ability to make contact since he never walks.

He's definitely not a butcher. I've seen guys in the majors where it was pretty easy to tell they were overmatched by the position. That is not the case with Andujar. The flaws I noticed were a tendency to wait for a big hop, rather than charging the ball, and he could be a tick slow in transferring from the catch to the throw (as mentioned above). Small things, but I guess they can make a big difference at this level. I did not think his range was that poor, but perhaps it is. Watching on TV, almost any play where a 3Bman has to move to his right or left can appear tough and/or spectacular. To me, with a little refinement, Andujar could be perfectly cromulent. Or maybe not; maybe the average 3Bman is so good these days that, on a relative comparison, he will never catch up.

I don't know how accurate any of the run-counting metrics are on him. On "real" stats, this stands out: Yankees 3Bmen turned 10 DPs this season (Andujar had 6). That is historically poor. I looked back the past 20-25 years and only found a couple teams with close to that few. This season, 26 teams turned between 23 and 40 DPs from third. Colorado and Seattle had 50. Boston 18. Yanks 10. (Yankees were last in DP overall. Their 2Bmen had the fewest, but were close to the pack. Their SS were a few spots ahead of last.)

Colorado has a guy who's pretty good and the Seattle guy ain't bad. Boston had the Devers/Nunez combo over there and neither will ever be mistaken for a distant relative of Robinson or Nettles, so the fact the NY turned barely more then half of what Boston did does suggest that NY could improve in this area.
If they can convince him(throw him the most cash) Machado would seem to be an ideal fit. Then again, looking at those 3B fielding numbers for Boston, he'd be a good fit there also.

But...will he play 3B? Is he really that fixated on playing SS? If he's concerned about his rep, then 3B is really where he wants be as he's known as the next Brooks. As SS he's known as "the guy who was awesome at 3B but is now a pretty average at SS"

I haven't seen the end of season updated numbers, so he may have improved a little, but ... he's not a quality fielder at 3rd.

While Andujar's fielding leaves something to be desired, he just completed his rookie season. It's a little too early to say he can't improve defensively, especially for a guy who unexpectedly became a starter after only 58 2017 AAA games. Plenty of time to move him to 1st base or LF, if needed, but off-season workouts & a full Spring Training as a starter might produce enough improvement to alleviate such concerns.

I don't see how the Yanks can add pitching and Machado while staying under the luxury tax threshold, especially with Judge, Severino, and Sanchez soon costing real money, so it may be one or the other.

I don’t think they intend to stay under the Yankee Tax threshold indefinitely, I think the plan was to reset the onerous and punitive rates at which their money is confiscated by the Manshiviks for being over their Arbitrary Artificial Player Salary Depression Line. Capology has come to baseball, which is a surefire way of knowing without a doubt that the league has completely lost its way.

Devers is not a good defensive 3B, and Nunez is awful, so for Andujar to be that much worse than them means he's really bad. Lack of range would certainly do that even if he's fairly smooth on the routine plays.

So Andujar is basically a young Aramis Ramirez. I think the Cubs were basically able to teach him to limit his range to a step or two and dive. Turned him into a perfectly cromulent third base defender.

I don’t think they intend to stay under the Yankee Tax threshold indefinitely, I think the plan was to reset the onerous and punitive rates at which their money is confiscated by the Manshiviks for being over their Arbitrary Artificial Player Salary Depression Line. Capology has come to baseball, which is a surefire way of knowing without a doubt that the league has completely lost its way.

The increased draft pick & tax rate penalties make it too costly to regularly stay above the luxury tax threshold, IMHO, although not that a bad for well-timed season or two at a time. With Stanton under contract through 2027, adding another costly 8-10 year deal gets tricky. Maybe it can be done, but things will be awfully tight once Judge & others start making real money.

Winning the Wild Card Game and getting bounced in four games in the ALDS hardly qualifies as a successful season, but, as far as ownership is concerned, the Yankees accomplished a very important goal this season. The Yankees stayed under the $197M luxury tax threshold and reset their tax rate, and saved tens of millions in the process. It’s not quite a clean slate financially, but it’s about as close as the Yankees can get.

Over the last year or so the general assumption seems to have been that once the Yankees reset their luxury tax rate — they’ll be taxed 20% rather than the maximum 50% should they go over the $206M threshold next year — they would go back over the threshold and spend lavishly. They’re the Yankees and they should rank near the top of the league in payroll, right? Right. It’s been assumed they’ll do it again. Will it be reality? No one really knows.

“I don’t want to speak for (Hal Steinbrenner), but my general feeling from him and for us has been not wanting to line the pockets of others to let them utilize that excess against us,” said Brian Cashman at his end-of-season press conference next week. “It was mission accomplished in terms of the payroll this year, and taking away advantages that teams have been getting from us because we were exceeding those thresholds.”

The increased draft pick & tax rate penalties make it too costly to regularly stay above the luxury tax threshold, IMHO, although not that a bad for well-timed season or two at a time. With Stanton under contract through 2027, adding another costly 8-10 year deal gets tricky. Maybe it can be done, but things will be awfully tight once Judge & others start making real money.

Indeed, the artificial suppression of market compensation is specifically designed to make it difficult for any team to pay fair market rates for their talent. Essentially an enormous transfer of funds from the players who deserve it to the owners who will (alternately) refuse to pay the inflated penalties imposed by the Mansheviks or benefit by being able to pay players less than they would otherwise receive in a market that did not punish teams for paying market rates.

One can only hope the next labor negotiation lays bare this Budshovik abomination as the ownership cash-grab it has always been. A strike wouldn't be too high a price to pay to restore some form of fairness to the onerous financial meddlings of ownership.

“I don’t want to speak for (Hal Steinbrenner), but my general feeling from him and for us has been not wanting to line the pockets of others to let them utilize that excess against us,” said Brian Cashman at his end-of-season press conference next week.

"He's on to us," hissed half the owners in the league before slithering away to their palatial subterranean lairs.

The increased draft pick & tax rate penalties make it too costly to regularly stay above the luxury tax threshold, IMHO, although not that a bad for well-timed season or two at a time. With Stanton under contract through 2027, adding another costly 8-10 year deal gets tricky. Maybe it can be done, but things will be awfully tight once Judge & others start making real money

If the Yankees decide to sign Machado (About Nothing), one way to go is with a shorter contract at a much higher annual rate (6 years for $250 million). This allows Machado to have one more significant free agent payday; and it allows the Yankees to avoid the crap years at the back end of one of these 8- to 10-year mega-deals (and avoid having two mega-deals expire at roughly the same time).

I'd also extend Judge right now for 6 years (buying out 2 years of free agency). He's shown enough this past year to make me feel comfortable enough doing that.